Tag: minimalism

Pure love and minimalistic beach tent life (August 2022)

From the hill in the southern mountains of Bulgaria, I went to the Black Sea Coast and picked up Artha. Together we headed to a wonderful and lonely beach that Artha had visited before. And our time there was profound… Full of pure love and openness.

It felt super to meet Artha again. It was like we knew each other for years although we just had spent some hours together at the Beglika festival. The connection between us was just intense, warm, and deep.

I picked her up in a flat. A flat. That was the first time since Corfu that I was in a flat again. It felt weird. The strong walls. The distance to nature.

After a bit of offroading, we parked Rosinante and took a few kilometers walk to the beach we would call home for some days. We found an awesome spot at the beach, set up Artha’s small tent and that was everything we had to do. In addition to the tent, we only had our sleeping bags, sleeping mats, a hand full of clothes, some fruits, some nuts, and some water. And I brought my bo staff with me.

Since I saw the people camping in tents in Greece, I wanted to try it and here I was. At that lonely beach. Absolutely minimalistic. With a wonderful woman, I barely knew but at the same time, it felt like I knew her my whole life.

We had a gorgeous time together swimming naked in the ocean, meditating, doing yoga, walking, talking, and feeling. We just lived there together deeply connected, deeply loving each other. But not in the craving and sexual way. We had no sex or any contact in that direction. We just flowed with whatever was there. Life was pure, simple. We talked about everything and these conversations felt so profound and authentic… Like old friends we felt and knew what the other was about, if the other wanted some space for herself or felt like spending time together. This connection between us…

I loved her deeply and that deep love felt so different to me. It felt pure and unconditional. Like it always was there in my life and I just rediscovered it. And I felt not only giving and sharing this love in Artha’s direction. I felt that same love coming from her as well. I felt so purely loved… I don’t know… Maybe this love was just what humans are seeking: being so purely and unconditionally loved as you had been (or still are) by your mother. A love without concepts. One that is just there and will never cease. A marvelous love that feels like a companion that heals you.

Getting rid of stuff and lifting Rosinante (August 2022)

Before I started my potentially never-ending journey, I had been thinking about taking three bicycles with me. One trials bike, one gravel bike, and one mountain bike/ enduro. In the end, I started my journey only with the mountain bike and used it for the last time in Croatia in February. From then on, I had been carrying it along.

Back in Germany, before I started my journey, Enduro biking and downhill were my favorite hobbies! I think I did it something like three or five days a week. This sport got me deeply and I loved it. I had so many wonderful moments while doing it. With wonderful friends and in solitude.

There had been the option to spend this year’s summer in the alps going from bike park to bike park. But as I was traveling, I quickly realized that downhill was not the thing I was after anymore. I wanted to explore freely and not restrict myself to places with nice biking trails.

Quickly I realized that the places I prefer visiting and living at are no good match for biking. Actually, I barely did see any nice biking trails during my journey at all. Maybe that’s because I did not search for them or just was not after them anymore. The small tracks in nature I’m finding are much better or even only possible on foot. Biking would mostly happen on tarmac roads in the traffic and gravel roads and I don’t feel like going for that. What is more, I absolutely learned to love walking and running. To explore the areas I’m visiting, be in nature, relax, everything. It’s so calm, natural, and pure.

So I finally was thinking about selling my Enduro in Bulgaria. Because of some special repair, the bike had needed back in Germany, I did not feel good about selling it to someone else and so I decided to send it back to Germany where a very good friend stored it. With this, I completely let go of it and the hobby I had been so much into. Again. Like I did before with: playing computer games, watching tv series and movies, partying, trial biking, gravel biking, riding a racing motorcycle, etc. I’m curios which ones will come back…

While preparing the bike for shipping, I was thinking of what else I could get rid of. So I put all my clothes on a blanket and had a look at it. I had: 19 t-shirts, 18 long sleeves, 11 long trousers, 6 short trousers, 4 long underpants, 17 underpants, 30 pairs of socks, 5 pullovers, and 4 jackets. To much. I examined every piece and sorted the ones out I wanted to get rid of.

Being in the mood of sorting, cleaning, organizing, and letting go, I examined everything I had with me. All the tools, spare parts, and equipment. All the stuff. And after that, I thought that it was crazy and interesting to go through everything I owned. Compared to my life in a flat, I had so much less. But still, I had so much. And I guess about one-quarter of it, I’m not using it regularly. But these things are mostly repair equipment and spare parts.

I thought about how it would be to travel with a very small car or only with a mule. I would have even less. And I could have even less the way I’m traveling. But I decided it was enough for that day.

And I felt very good and kind of liberated. Now that I’m writing this post, I’m thinking that getting rid of stuff is without a doubt one of the healthiest things I ever did. This and starting a spiritual process or whatever you may call it. Having less and less and less. Every time getting rid of stuff feels like a weight gets lifted from my shoulders. And this is interesting: I’m absolutely sure that one could live with much stuff as free and liberated as with less stuff. But doing so is just more difficult. But think about it. If you would not attach to anything, it would not make a difference how much weight you are carrying, right?

After shipping the bike, I faced something that had been bothering me: lifting the cabin from the pickup. I had been thinking about what I would do if I would need to lift it. Normally you would do that with a special cart/ “stand with tires” but I did not buy that one and it’s way too heavy and bulky to take it along while traveling. I imagined different approaches to how one could do it and this is still my favorite one: Taking the winch rope, putting it up over a big branch of a tree, attaching it to two big recovery straps I’ve with me, and then lifting the cabin with the winch. In the end, it was much easier and maybe a little more reliable and very simple.